


the sharp teeth of the one you love

by badritual



Series: Exchange Fic [48]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Canon Divergence - Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Don't copy to another site, Gothic Romance, M/M, Not a Happy Story, POV Obi-Wan, Pretty Dubious Consent, Temporarily Suitless Vader, Three Day Rental 2020, To the Victor Go the Spoils, slight stockholm syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:00:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24022483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badritual/pseuds/badritual
Summary: He dreams of fire.
Relationships: Darth Sidious & Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Darth Vader
Series: Exchange Fic [48]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1705675
Comments: 2
Kudos: 63
Collections: Three Day Rental: A Horror Themed Flash Exchange Round 1





	the sharp teeth of the one you love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yujacheong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yujacheong/gifts).



> I really wanted to do something _Event Horizon_ -y for you, yujacheong, but couldn’t resist the dark gothic romance of _Crimson Peak_. This is, as you will soon find out, not a strict fusion/retelling/etc. of _Crimson Peak_.
> 
> Thanks to my friend [](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/crimsonkitty/profile)[**crimsonkitty**](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/crimsonkitty/) for betaing this for me!
> 
>  **Additional Warnings:** This is pretty dubious but not graphic at all. There are some descriptions that could be gross/body horror-ish. 
> 
> If you think this needs more tags or warnings, please let me know!
> 
> Title from "Sick," by Chelsea Wolfe.

He dreams of fire. He dreams of leaping orange and red flames tearing at his skin, stripping him down to the bone and leaving him a burnt husk. He gropes on ash-black shores for his lightsaber, but it’s fallen out of his reach. He gropes, too, for the familiar pull of Anakin’s presence but that too has fallen out of his reach.

_“I hate you!”_

_“I loved you.”_

Obi-Wan jerks out of sleep, the thick scent of smoke and burning flesh filling his lungs. 

_It was only a dream_.

He sits back against a slab of rock masquerading as a pillow and allows his eyes to adjust to the dark that surrounds him. He can sense the silhouette of a man—a figure from his nightmares—sitting beside his cot in quiet contemplation.

Or, perhaps not exactly quiet. Brooding might be a better word for it. 

“Who are you? Why have you brought me here?” he calls out to the figure.

It lifts its head and gazes at him—or it would, if it had eyes. For it’s not a man but a machine. A terrifying beast of gleaming plasteel, wrapped in a cape of obsidian. 

“My master would have me leave you for dead on the shores of Mustafar,” the figure muses. 

And then Obi-Wan realizes, as a rapidly widening maw of horror cracks through his very core, who this creature of smoke and shadow really is.

“Anakin,” he gasps. 

Anakin lifts a hand and snaps it into a fist, pinning Obi-Wan back against the cool stone wall. “That name means nothing to me,” he thunders.

Obi-Wan reaches up, grasping, clawing at his throat. “ _Please_.”

The invisible fist loosens and he slumps against the wall.

“My master says if I could turn you I might be permitted to keep you as my pet,” says the thing that had once been Anakin.

Obi-Wan grows cold all over. He thinks of water now, of being plunged into a pool of water without warning. “Your pet?”

The creature stares at him, the black mirrors of his visage reflecting Obi-Wan’s distorted face. “Yes, my _pet_ ,” he croons, almost mockingly. “The Hutt keeps many pets for himself, does he not?”

Obi-Wan’s mind skitters back to the cruel sand and sun of Tatooine. Jabba had kept harems of dancing girls. Perhaps that is what Anakin— _not Anakin, who is he now?_ —means.

“I could serve you so much better as your right hand,” Obi-Wan blurts out. Shame floods him, singes him from the inside out. “I could be a valuable asset. A spy!”

“I have no need for a spy,” says Anakin, standing and sweeping his robes behind him. “But I am in need of a consort now that Padmé is…”

The silence lingers between them, meaningfully.

“Padmé’s dead?” Obi-Wan shakes his head, horror cutting through his guts like a vibroknife. “Did you kill her?”

The creature all but growls, “She was stolen from me.” He advances on Obi-Wan, a predator with its prey caught in its sights. The words come out of his vocoder distorted and yet terrifyingly crystal-clear at the same time. “I blame you, Kenobi.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Obi-Wan says, slumping in defeat.

“You stole her from me. You will take her place by my side.” Anakin heads to the door, pausing for a moment to regard Obi-Wan from behind his impassive black mask. “And you _will_ address me as Lord Vader.”

He sweeps out of the room and the door slides shut behind him, latching with a hiss.

Obi-Wan drops his head into his hands and begins to weep.

* * *

Vader doesn’t visit him the following day, nor the day after that.

* * *

Obi-Wan starts scratching out lines on the rutted stone walls as a means of telling time, keeping track of how long he’s been in this place. Vader visits him infrequently, at all hours of the day, pressing him for an answer.

“Will you join me?” he asks. 

“No,” Obi-Wan replies.

And Vader slithers out of his tiny prison cell like a sick shadow, leaving Obi-Wan to the damp and dark. 

Sometimes, Vader leaves food on a tray beside his cot. Sometimes he forgets—or chooses not to come—and so Obi-Wan scavenges for even the tiniest bit of sustenance. He’s taken to eating the things that crawl in through the cracks in the walls, not knowing or caring if they’re poisonous. 

On the fourteenth day—according to the scratches he’s grooved into the stone walls—Vader comes to him again. He carries a snow-white cloak over his arm.

Obi-Wan grows distressed to see it’s exactly his size. 

“I am done asking,” Vader says. “We will be wed tonight. Lord Sidious demands it.”

“I’ve no choice in the matter,” Obi-Wan says, phrasing it almost like a question.

“No,” Vader says. He thrusts the cloak at Obi-Wan. “You will be happy.”

It sounds like a threat.

Obi-Wan slips out of his dirty, soot-and-blood-soaked rags, pulling the cloak over his shoulders. It would fit him perfectly if he hadn’t lost so much weight. 

“Come with me.” Vader beckons to Obi-Wan to follow him with the crook of his gloved finger.

The two of them drift out of the prison cell and down a long corridor of shadows. Obi-Wan feels like a ghost, haunting the halls of some gleaming palace. The ends of his white robe drag along the stone, growing stained with dirt and mud.

“What will you do to me?” he asks, as they come to a standstill in front of a set of tall doors made of glistening black glass.

Vader doesn’t reply. He only waves a hand at the doors, which swing open for him, and they pass through. 

Sidious is waiting for them atop a massive black throne, surrounded by his red-clad sentry. 

“Obi-Wan has agreed to your demands, my lord,” Vader says, dropping to his knees in front of Sidious’s throne.

“Good, _good_ ,” Sidious sneers, flicking watery, lizard-eyes at Obi-Wan. “Has he been prepared for the marriage ritual?”

“No, my lord,” Vader replies. 

“Take him to be purified,” Sidious demands.

Obi-Wan lifts his hands, curling them into fists, intending to fight Sidious’s sentry to his likely death, but he never gets the chance. Black lightning sizzles through Obi-Wan’s brain and then all he knows is darkness.

* * *

When he comes to, he finds himself spread out on a stone dais, completely nude. A pretty girl with a crown of blood-red flowers atop her head is dipping a rag in water, while another is mixing some sort of foul-smelling ointment in a jar.

Obi-Wan tries to sit up but soon finds he’s been strapped to the dais with leather bands.

“Where is An—Lord Vader?” Obi-Wan calls out waveringly.

The girl with the flowers in her hair gazes at him with slitted, spice-drunk eyes. “He waits,” she says. “We prepare you for him.”

Obi-Wan struggles against the leather straps, then tries to draw on his powers to break through the bonds to no avail. “Have you dampened my abilities?” he asks.

“Lord Sidious’s orders,” a third attendant says, stepping into the room. She takes the jar and starts smearing the ointment into the bottoms of Obi-Wan’s feet. 

“What is that stuff?” he asks. 

“Never you mind,” the woman snaps, glaring daggers at him. She returns to the task at hand, rubbing the nasty stuff into his skin.

He feels a clawed hand creep slowly up his thigh. 

“What would Lord Vader think, Arashla?” The flower-crowned woman scolds her companion, slapping her taloned hand away from Obi-Wan’s thigh.

“But, Taasi, Lord Vader’s new toy is just so pretty,” the one called Arashla sing-songs, leaning down and dragging a nail through the hair on his bare chest. 

Obi-Wan struggles against both his bonds and the dark magics that are draining away his Force abilities. He finds no respite, not that he’d really expected any.

“Both of you hush,” the third woman snaps. “Lord Vader’s pet is in distress. Hurry and finish your preparations so the ceremony can begin.”

Obi-Wan closes his eyes and lets his head fall back against unforgiving stone, allowing the attendants to finish preparing him, their small hands working ointments and oils and poultices into his skin until he’s gleaming like the palace that surrounds him. Taasi drapes garlands of flowers—blood-red, he assumes, like the flowers atop her head—around his neck while Arashla rubs perfume into every inch of his exposed skin.

“What do you suppose Lord Vader will do with this one, Mother Zalika? There’s already been so many,” Taasi sighs, trailing her fingertips over Obi-Wan’s bare chest. “I like him.”

 _So many?_ he wonders. 

“What Lord Vader does with his playthings is nothing you should concern yourself with,” Zalika snaps, slapping Taasi’s hands away from Obi-Wan. “We aren’t here to think. We’re here to do our duty. And do it gladly.”

“But he never seems to keep them for very long,” Arashla complains. “And when he’s done with them, they’re no more than empty broken dolls. Where’s the fun in that?”

“Quiet, girls,” Zalika hisses. “Vader’s pet might be listening.”

“Oh, who cares,” scoffs Arashla. “It’s not like he can do anything about it.”

“He is still a powerful wielder of the Force,” Zalika murmurs somewhere above him. “Even if his powers have been muzzled.”

Obi-Wan feels prying fingers tug at his eyelid. 

“I think he’s fallen asleep,” Taasi says, with a giggle. 

“Wake him up, then. And finish your duties before Lord Vader comes looking for him,” Zalika says.

Obi-Wan blinks his eyes open, feigning a yawn. Arashla and Taasi stand in front of him, one clasping the snow-white robe against their chest while the other bears a jeweled crown in their hands.

After he’s dressed in his white robe and the crown is placed on his head, the older of the three—Zalika—leads him back to Sidious’s throne room.

“So nice of you to join us, Kenobi. I was about to send my men in to make sure you hadn’t attempted an escape,” Sidious says, with a sharp laugh and a cruel twist of his lips. “Let’s begin, shall we?”

One of the guards grabs hold of his arm and drags him over to Vader, who waits on his knees in front of Sidious. Obi-Wan can’t be certain Vader’s moved an inch since he was whisked away by Sidious’s attendants.

“Through passion may we find our purpose.” Sidious’s voice slithers into Obi-Wan’s ears like a sandworm through the Tatooine desert. “Through our purpose may we find deliverance. Through deliverance may we transcend the bonds of the mortal world. And through transcendence may we conquer every chain that bind us.”

Obi-Wan feels warm all over, but he doesn’t dare question it. Not now, on his knees next to Vader, at his master’s feet. The crown atop his head feels suddenly heavy, unbearably so. And the cloak he’s been wrapped up in feels stifling, to the point he’s been set aflame. 

“Lord Vader,” Sidious calls out. “It is time. Claim your prize.”

Obi-Wan startles, as the cold truth of the situation he finds himself in begins to trickle down his spine. 

_So this is what it is to be Vader’s plaything, his new toy, his pet_ , he thinks.

A voice that sounds achingly like Anakin’s slices through his mind. _You’ve accepted your fate, then. Give yourself to me._

The familiarity of Anakin’s voice is almost too much to bear.

Vader reaches up and, with slightly shaking hands, unclasps his helmet with a pneumatic hiss. Obi-Wan watches, ensnared by perverse curiosity and horror, as Vader slowly lifts the helmet off his head.

Obi-Wan can feel Anakin’s agony rip through him, thousands upon thousands of bolts of pain and misery tearing at him like tiny blades. And he can feel Sidious’s pleased chuckle vibrate in his chest as Anakin drops the helmet to the stone in front of him. 

He is truly horrible to behold, his face a mess of burnt flesh and scar tissue. His skull is nearly hairless, but for a few pale wisps, and his eyelashes and eyebrows have been completely singed away. 

He is utterly unrecognizable, appearing almost inhuman, monstrous—and yet Obi-Wan can’t tear his eyes away.

“And now your suit,” Sidious demands. “Show Kenobi what you have become.”

Vader stands up, creakily, and begins to remove the suit. Obi-Wan had assumed the suit was what kept him alive, but it seems he’d been mistaken. Anakin’s body is covered in leaking sores and scarred flesh, shiny synthskin welded tightly where his natural flesh had been completely burnt away. His soul is still in agony, but now that he’s out of the suit the pain is less acute. 

“Consummate your union,” Sidious hisses in that horrible slithering voice.

Anakin turns to Obi-Wan, stiffly, and reaches for him, metal fingers digging into tender flesh. Obi-Wan is too startled to try to fight him off. Instead, he goes down to the stone with Anakin, Obi-Wan clutching at the false skin he wears so uneasily. 

Obi-Wan stares into a hideous, unfamiliar face while the familiar dark threads in Anakin’s soul—dark threads Obi-Wan had tried to valiantly to ignore for so very long—weave into his own. 

After they’re finished, he doesn’t move or speak for a long time. Sidious’s sentry carry him back to his cell and leave him on the cold, hard ground.

* * *

After their joining, Obi-Wan stops keeping track of time. He loses days, weeks, maybe even months. Not long after his initiation, Sidious has him moved to his own suite of rooms. They’ve been very kind to him, he knows he should feel grateful to Sidious and Vader that they’ve chosen to spare his life and reward him for his obedience.

Anakin—Vader—Anakin comes to him infrequently after that first time. And he demands coupling even less frequently than that. It would be almost ordinary if Obi-Wan weren’t essentially a prisoner of the Empire. 

When Anakin does deign to visit, Obi-Wan detects a stain of shame on his soul. 

It pleases him to know that this new version of Anakin can still feel shame, even while it’s overshadowed by his grief and rage. 

It gives him hope that Anakin— _his_ Anakin—is still in there somewhere, behind that cold, unfeeling black visage.

Perhaps—perhaps all is not lost. Maybe, someday, Obi-Wan could reach him.

The discordant clang of durasteel draws Obi-Wan out of his fantasies and daydreams. Vader’s looming, thickening shadow darkens the threshold of his bedchamber, smelling of ash and smoke and burnt flesh. But not his own, this time. Someone else’s, Obi-Wan senses. Another Jedi, as he had once been.

He says nothing; he can feel that Vader isn’t in the mood for light dinner conversation. He never seems to want to talk, which suits Obi-Wan just fine. He just sits and broods, his melancholy moods darkening overhead like heavy rainclouds. 

Vader sulks into Obi-Wan’s room and over to the couch, settling on it in a puff of dust.

Still, he says nothing. 

Obi-Wan pushes aside pieces of flimsiplast and his stylus to join Vader on the sofa.

They sit in silence, dark energy crackling around them like little lightning bolts. 

Finally, Vader breaks the silence: 

“What is it you’ve been hiding from me.”

“What? Nothing, my lord,” Obi-Wan says, thinking of the pages of flimsi covered in his ridiculously ornate cursive script. 

Calligraphy had been part of his lessons, first as a youngling and later as a padawan. He hadn’t had much use for the skill during his days as a member of the Jedi Council and he’d let the skills erode through disuse over the years. But now, with all this empty time on his hands, he’s found he needs something to occupy his racing mind and his idle hands. So, writing it is.

“Your mind betrays you,” Vader rumbles, a faint threat to his tone. He places a gloved hand at his waist, not too far from the hilt of his lightsaber.

Obi-Wan’s hand falls to his own belt, before he remembers they’d taken his lightsaber away shortly after he arrived. “I’ve been writing.”

“Letters?” Vader sounds suspicious, fingers twitching closer to his ’saber hilt.

“No,” Obi-Wan insists. “My memoirs.”

“Why would we have any need for that?” Vader asks, sounding genuinely baffled.

“It’s mostly to occupy my mind,” Obi-Wan says. He thinks of bundling his manuscript up and sending it off with one of Sidious’s sentry or an attendant to have it printed. “It might prove of some use, someday in the future.”

Vader lets out a mirthless chuckle. “Perhaps,” he allows. He pushes to his feet and gazes down at Obi-Wan. “I will see you for dinner tonight.”

With that, he turns on his heel and sweeps out of Obi-Wan’s room. He imagines lightning and black clouds following Vader out of his suite.

Once he’s certain he’s alone, Obi-Wan returns to his desk and digs his papers out from under a pile of scrolls and approved Imperial literature. He scans over his writing, lips moving silently as his eyes trace the words.

_A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…_

Obi-Wan takes up his stylus and resumes writing.


End file.
